The United States and the European Union agreed yesterday to work together to prepare possible tougher economic sanctions in response to Russia’s behaviour in Ukraine, including on the energy sector, and to make Europe less dependent on Russian gas.
US President Barack Obama said after a summit with top EU officials that Russian President Vladimir Putin had miscalculated if he thought he could divide the West or count on its indifference over his annexation of Crimea.
Leaders of the Group of Seven major industrial powers decided this week to hold off on sanctions targeting Moscow’s economy unless Putin took further action to destabilise Ukraine or other former Soviet republics.
“If Russia continues on its current course, however, the isolation will deepen, sanctions will increase and there will be more consequences for the Russian economy,” Obama told a joint news conference with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.
He also said Nato should step up its presence in new east European member states bordering on Russia and Ukraine to provide reassurance that the alliance’s mutual defence guarantee would protect them.
Western concern has focused on Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s eastern border. Russia has held several military drills and some have brought large Russian forces close to Ukraine’s eastern border, adding to concerns of an invasion after President Vladimir Putin secured permission from Parliament to send in troops to protect Russians citizens and interests if needed. Russian troops are also holding military drills on the Black Sea coast of Georgia’s breakaway republic of Abkhazia. The drills come as tension grows in the region following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.
Russian news agencies, citing a military press service, said the main objective of the drills is to hold manoeuvres at an “unknown terrain on the sea coast.”
Russia recognised the independence of Abkhazia after waging a five-day war with Georgia in August 2008. Georgia and most other countries do not recognise it as an ind-pendent state.
Meanwhile Russia has said it will increase the price it charges Ukraine for gas from April.
In response to EU pleas to expand US gas exports to Europe to reduce reliance on Russian supplies, Obama said a new transatlantic trade deal under negotiation would make it easier to licence such sales.
However, he said Europe should also look to develop its own energy resources – a veiled reference to environmental resistance to shale gas extraction and nuclear power – and not just count on America.
Russia provides around one third of the EU’s oil and gas and some 40 per cent of the gas is exported through Ukraine.
“You cannot just rely on other people’s energy, even if it has some costs, some downside,” the EU ambassador to Washington quoted Obama as telling his EU hosts over a working lunch.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has led the charge for the adoption of technologies such as shale gas racking in response to the Ukraine crisis.
“Some countries are almost 100-per cent reliant on Russian gas, so I think it is something of a wake-up call,” Cameron said on Tuesday.
Obama, Pope to meet
Despite differences on moral issues, US President Barack Obama will find in Pope Francis a welcome ally on issues of poverty and social justice when they meet for the first time at the Vatican today.
The US President has sparred with the Catholic Church hierarchy in the United States over his support for abortion rights, gay marriage and the “contraception mandate” that requires employers to provide health insurance cover for artificial birth control.
But Pope Francis, while making clear that there will be no changes to Catholic doctrine on such issues, has used softer language than his predecessors. For his part, Obama has repeatedly praised Francis for his compassion and emphasis on helping the poor, and the meeting could help to give impetus to some of his initiatives back home, such as boosting the middle class and helping low-income Americans succeed.
The White House said Obama wanted to discuss “pressing global challenges such as lack of economic mobility and opportunity.”
Pope Francis’s more open-minded attitude toward women and gays also resonates with Obama, who counted on both groups to help propel him to the presidency in 2008 and 2012.